Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 21, 2024 - Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18

One of the most difficult problems in understanding Jesus’ message about the Good Shepherd is the images that we have in our minds of the Good Shepherd. Images created by generations and generations of art. I put on the front cover of this week’s bulletin one of my favorite black and white sketches of the Good Shepherd; Jesus holding a little tiny lamb in his arms. On the back page, we have a coloring page of the Good Shepherd, a little bit closer to what a sheep actually looks like. It would be very difficult for anyone to hold a lamb like Jesus is holding this lamb. When lambs are first born, they weigh about twelve pounds. So, roughly the same as your average house cat or chihuahua. By the time they are fully grown, depending on what breed of sheep they are, they weigh between 100 and 350 pounds. So, starting about the size of an average police dog or collie and going to the size of a small pony. Try picking up one of those and caressing it in your arms. Right?

So, I said to you that Jesus uses the same phrase twice and gives a different teaching after each time he uses it. The phrase of course is very famous, “I am the Good Shepherd.” We are going to talk about the second meaning first. This is for the grown-ups here in Church, so you kids can tune out if you want.

Jesus says, “There are other sheep I have, not of this fold. Them also must I lead. And there will be one fold and one shepherd.” What does he mean? Well, probably this Gospel means different things at different times. When Jesus spoke it, probably he meant this. Being a Jewish man, he would not have been able to go into the Pagan territories just to the north and just to the east of Palestine to talk about his Father and his message of salvation. It would depend on his followers to bring that message there after he was gone. But, by the time John wrote this gospel, almost 70 years after Jesus was crucified and risen, it had a very different meaning in the minds of Christians.

That’s why I said to pay close attention to the very last line of the First Reading. The very last line was, “There is no other name, in all of creation, given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” Given to what? The human race. For what? By which we are to be saved. What? A name. In the time when John was writing, the Roman authorities had said that salvation came in the name of the Roman Emperor. And this is John’s way of pushing back and saying, “No, there is someone much more important than any worldly leader.”

But this problem has followed us throughout history. From around the year 800 till just after World War I, the Catholic Church was convinced that the best kind of society we could have is one in which the Catholic Church dictated its morality to the people of every nation and everybody lived by those teachings. It was only after World War I that it became clear to the Catholic authorities that, among the various imperfect forms of government, the one that seemed to have the best likelihood of the best outcome for the most number of people was some form of democratic government.

A democratic government is built on what we call “secular humanism.” Secular humanism is not our enemy, it’s our contestant. Someone who discusses or challenges us. There are some representatives of secular humanism in every generation who have it in for the Catholic Church. There’s no question about that. But, by and large, we are not their enemy; they are not our enemy.

Some Christians mistakenly think that we still need to impose Christian values on the legal authority of the place where we live in order to live a good life. They’ve missed the point. You don’t present the name by which all of the human race is going to be saved by shouting and by anger and by force. You do it by serious conversation in which you try to tell people why. Why we believe what we do and why we believe in whom we do. If they listen and change their hearts and minds, good. If they don’t, we step away respectfully. That’s the first part of the homily.

Now, kids, you have to pay attention. Jesus also said, “I am the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep and he knows his sheep intimately.” Everybody in this room is a shepherd. Everybody. All those who are parents right now or have raised children sometime in your life, you’ve been shepherds. You know what it's like to literally or figuratively lay down your life for eighteen years per kid at least. Sometimes in the mid-twenties, if not beyond. If you are now a grandma or a grandpa, you are still in the process of being a shepherd in a different way. But if you’re a big brother or a big sister, you are a shepherd, sometimes watching out for your little brother or your little sister. If you’re a team captain or a hall monitor or a playground monitor, you’re a shepherd. Everybody who works for a living, has people whom they direct, is a shepherd, whether on a cruise someplace or an office. Those that work on a police force are shepherds. First responders are shepherds. People in the military are shepherds. Teachers are shepherds. Doctors and nurses are shepherds. Every time that you have the care of another person, you are a shepherd.

And Jesus tells us two things about the process of shepherding. Good shepherds put their life on the line, at least figuratively, for those whose care they have. And good shepherds try to know and be known. But because we can’t always be good - and sometimes we’re bad spectacularly - one of the things we do at Mass every Sunday is ask our Good Shepherd, Jesus, to help us to be good shepherds during the coming week.